Monster Hunter (2020)
Directed by Paul W. S. Anderson
A portal transports Cpt. Artemis and an elite unit of soldiers to a strange world where powerful monsters rule with deadly ferocity. Faced with relentless danger, the team encounters a mysterious hunter who may be their only hope to find a way home.
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6 films that influenced Monster Hunter
What critics say influenced Monster Hunter
This is a feature designed around its thrilling monster attack sequences, running the gamut from Alien and Pitch Black inspired cave scenes to bright sunny sand monsters in the vein of Tremors .
Beyond some spider/scorpion creatures who seem modeled after those in Pitch Black (2000), there are only two, and they take an enormous amount of effort to bypass (not to mention, they look like any number of such approximations from contemporary Hollywood films, from Pacific Rim to Jurassic Park to the new Godzilla titles).
After battling this beast, they take refuge in a cave structure and are then set upon by a new assortment of creatures that look like the monsters from “Starship Troopers,” reproduce like the monsters from “Alien” and fear the sunlight like the monsters in “Pitch Black.”
They run toward the rocks, where some giant bug creatures attack (these look and act like the monsters in the vintage Vin Diesel movie “Pitch Black”).
In some ways this film, and its relentless obsession with action sequences involving these unfriendly beasts in different iterations, reminded me most of Paul Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers, which came from a more prestigious label at Sony rather than from the studio’s discount B-movie brand at Screen Gems which is releasing Monster Hunter.
After battling this beast, they take refuge in a cave structure and are then set upon by a new assortment of creatures that look like the monsters from “Starship Troopers,” reproduce like the monsters from “Alien” and fear the sunlight like the monsters in “Pitch Black.”
Some resemble dragons or dinosaurs, others look like they might be related to creatures from other movies: the giant bugs from Starship Troopers , or the sandworms from Tremors or Dune .
During all of that, Anderson unabashedly cribs from "Starship Troopers," "Alien/Aliens," "Tremors" and more in a sort of guilty pleasure way.
The kinds of monsters you want from a movie called "Monster Hunter," creatures that look like they've been born out of some unholy amalgam of "Starship Troopers," "Tremors" and "Eight Legged Freaks."
Aside from the “Starship Troopers”-like Nerscylla, the Black Diablos is all we get until deep into the second act, as the entire first hour of “Monster Hunter” is entirely, inexplicably devoted to the tentative alliance that forms between Artemis and the titular Monster Hunter (Jaa) who rescues her amidst the sand.
The opening of the film apes the helicopter scene from “Predator,” complete with an old-timey song and lots of roguish types that the audience is supposed to believe you’d find in a highly trained and cohesive military unit.
In the two films that followed, Mortal Kombat and Event Horizon , location became even more critical — particularly in the latter, a horror-sci-fi masterpiece about a spaceship that had gone quite literally to hell and back, in which the ship, a cross between space station and medieval torture chamber, was arguably the central character.
I am, to some degree, an Anderson apologist (ask me my thoughts on his first Resident Evil, The Three Musketeers, or Event Horizon, and you’ll get a giddy earful), but Monster Hunter is pretty hard to defend.
The bare-bones rescue team plot and simple characterization that leads to dimensional uncertainty and new threats are nearly beat for beat from Event Horizon.
Anderson made a name for himself all the way back in 1995 with the original movie adaptation of the Mortal Kombat video games, subsequently directing the space horror nightmare Event Horizon and the mashup fight film Alien vs. Predator .
Anderson has gained fans through previous films like “Mortal Kombat,” the “Resident Evil” series and “Event Horizon.”
As a filmmaker, Anderson has a take-it-or-leave-it style that confounds many, but pleases enough to sustain a career making hyper-visual effects-heavy movies that play like feature-length trailers: “Event Horizon,” “Alien vs. Predator,” “Pompeii” and the four aforementioned “Resident Evil” movies.
The crass B-movie action pic writer-director Paul W.S. Anderson (“Evil Resident”/”Death Race”) and his hottie actress wife Milla Jovovich, who plays Capt.
Almost every film he’s made is either based on a video game – “Mortal Kombat,” “Resident Evil,” “Resident Evil: The Final Chapter” – or should have been a video game – “Alien vs. Predator,” “Death Race.”
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A better comparison might be Justin Kurzel, who made the “Assassin’s Creed” movie.
The opening few minutes of Paul W.S. Anderson’s “Monster Hunter” are such a delightful eruption of unfettered, goofy-ass, who-cares-what-your-parents-think nerdcore that it seems as if the director of 1995’s “Mortal Kombat” (and the “Resident Evil” series after that) has reset video game movies back to the good old days when they weren’t bogged down by delusions of respectability — when they were memorably bad instead of just dull or “Assassin’s Creed.”